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How to get excited about research again?
- Thread starter narla_hotep
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I actually felt kind of similar when I was doing my summer rotation between M1 and M2. Still loved research, but more interested in med school stuff and I ended up spending a chunk of time that summer memorizing first aid to start preparing for step 1 (which I did well on). Once I was done with Step 1 and focused full-time on research for my PhD, I got much more interested in it again and started to love it again. I think for me it was a learning experience that task switching is really hard for me. I think for you the key is to choose a lab with a great mentor that you get along with really well. If you're particularly interested in "disease," you might also want to chase that and look into labs that are very close to the clinical side on the translational spectrum, e.g. working on developing therapies for well-developed disease animal models, working with clinical samples, or doing clinical genetics. There are plenty of opportunities for this in cancer biology. Anyway, totally n = 1 and just some random thoughts, but I'm posting in case it is helpful for you. Good luck.
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Well, what diseases do you find most interesting? I guarantee you that wherever you are, if there is not an institutional expert in that disease (which seems unlikely), there is someone who is similar enough that you can take their scientific approaches and meld it into your disease of interest. Also, on your rotations, find a PI who is really good at displaying passion in their work. I mean, every PI finds their work interesting, but does that interest actually show when you talk to them about it? In my experience, if a PI has general enthusiasm for their research that is easily detectable, that enthusiasm can be quite contagious.
The learning of medical school, where you are told to do "X" or read about "Y" and take a test on "Z", is very different than research, where there is far more self-directed learning, discovery. There are also a lot more hurdles and failures associated with research than clinical medicine, but personally, I think that makes the victories than much sweeter. It is also probably hard to imagine at your stage, but the further you get along in clinical medicine, the more you realize there is little that is "high yield" and many diseases are tackled currently not by precision, but with a sledgehammer.
The learning of medical school, where you are told to do "X" or read about "Y" and take a test on "Z", is very different than research, where there is far more self-directed learning, discovery. There are also a lot more hurdles and failures associated with research than clinical medicine, but personally, I think that makes the victories than much sweeter. It is also probably hard to imagine at your stage, but the further you get along in clinical medicine, the more you realize there is little that is "high yield" and many diseases are tackled currently not by precision, but with a sledgehammer.
